The Siculi are thought to have been the Shekelesh of the sea people's, Mycenean era greekspushed out by the Dorian invasions. The Ligurians where a proto-Celtic people's spread across southeastern France and parts of Switzerland and north-Italy.
 
What I have realized upon further analysis is that Oenotrus (father of Enotrians) Peucetius, Daunus and Messapus where all sons of Lycaon of Arcadia from the Peloponnese in Greece. Now, the Iapygian group of Apulia (Peuceti,Daunian,Messapi) where once said to have come from Crete, as IAPYX The eponymous hero of the Iapygian's was from Crete and was venerated there. But being sons ofLycaon this links them to mainland Greece, Peloponnese region. Either way, which ever they came from, we know that Lycaon is a region of southern Turkey (Lycaonia in turkey, Lucania Italy, Lykaia Ancient Greek festival of the wolf) and that Lycaon was son of Pelasgus. So now, ultimately, we know that the Oeonotrians and Iapygians were of the Pelasgian race. Now, who were the pelasgians? To me, personally, they where the Sea people's of the late Bronze Age. Now,where did the sea people's originally come from? Where did they settle? It would seem the Pelasgians would eventually inhabit parts of mainland Greece, Crete, Aegean islands and coastal Asia Minor. Where does the Pelasgian race start off? Probably somewhere near Karphatos or Rhode islands near the southern coast's of Asia Minor; they came from an area holding with in it Crete,Rhodes Aegean island region or the southern coasts of westernmost turkey by the Aegean Sea. This is from were they would originally explode from. One branch of sea people's would move from Karpathos island towards Crete and another from the same starting point but off towards Cyprus. From Rhodes a branch would found nearby Caria and Lycia, two sea people states in Asia Minor, the Lydians where of this race. Lycaonia and the city of Sagalassos where founded by these people. They moved eastwards, hugging the southern coast of Asia Minor until reaching the Cilicia region near Syria were they defeated the Qude people and sacked Karchemish. They sacked Allalah,Aleppo and Ugarit, destroying the Amurru people Of Syria. They kept heading south into the levant and onto the Sinai peninsula where they fought the Egyptians; one of their branches was the Peleset (Palestinians). Another was Sicily's Shekel and another Sardinia's Sherden. Then there were the Libu and Meshwesh; non-related Libyan tribes that moved towards Egypt's capital regions, the Hapiru moved from Jordan into Jerusalem, another non-related Semitic group. The Arameans expanded from the northern Arabian deserts towards Lebanon, Syria and Iraq where they sacked Babylonian cities. The Elamites occupied southwestern Iran and the Assyrians of the time where centred on northern Iraq. The Medes where in northwestern Iran, and the Hurrians occupied the Armenian plateau. The Kaska people lived in north-central turkey and the Phrygians where slightly to the west of them. From here, the Phrygians would launch campaigns eastwards towards Armenia. Those Sea people's that moved from Asia Minor towards the Aegean Sea where Lydians and Dardanians/Teukrians basically Trojans. By the time they reached the Aegean Sea they where known as Danaans,Achaeans and PELASGIANS. The Tyrsenoi (Etruscans) were a derivate of this race. I personally believe the Pelasgian race originated on Kaphtor (crete) as it seems this is from where the original Leleges (inhabitants of west turkey) seem to have came from (from back-migration travel of isolated middle eastern people's on Crete back towards turkey after having initially arrived from there either way. It would seem a group of Lydians mixed in with Dardanians/Teukrians would have left western turkey for the Aegean Sea. In their transition through the Greek Aegean, these exact same Anatolian men would be knows as DANAANS (Dauni? Denyen,sea people's, Israeli tribe of Dan?) others as ACHAEANS (their first colonies where on CYPRUS) and as PELASGIANS. From the Peloponnese , one group of them would arrive in eastern Sicily (siculi) then from there one group would move towards Tuscany and another to Sardinia. To me, the Sea people's/pelasgians where Mycenean era Greeks fleeing their homeland after the Dorian invasions and expanding/changing the Mediterranean world.
 
The Sea people's sudden presence in the Mediterranean basin brought about the end of the Arzawa, Hatti, Qude, Alashiya and Amurru people's of the levant and Turkey. They had probably been expulsed from the Aegean region but had arrived from the east of that region anyways once ago. The sea people's were born of the Orient but left it for Aegean Europe, they would return later though, acting as hostile, to fight/subdue much of the Levantine region of the Middle East, who were they? PELASGIANS,DANAANS,ACHAEANS........Tyrsenoi/Etruscans Oenotrians Peucetians Iapygians

The Minoan/Mycenean era Greeks.
 
False, the Elymians where literally Dardanians of the Troad region, Trojan citizens fleeing the sack of Troy by Greeks such as the Achaeans. Their hero was Acestes, he founded Segesta,Entella,Eryx probably. So basically it goes as follows: Acestes and his group of several thousand colonizers left Troy and arrived in western Sicily. Afterwards, Aeneas the Trojan would arrive as wel with more people, for them, the Elymians would build he aforementioned cities; a Trojan region of extreme western Sicily.
Do you really believe it, or do you think it's a myth ?
 
Eastern Sicily was colonized by Sicels, Mycenean-era sea people's (greeks), the center had a more typically west-European genetic distribution and the westernmost regions were first colonized by ancient Phoenicians and then subsequently invaded by anatolians
 
It would seem that somehow bull worshipping cultures that originated in Mesopotamia spread towards western Anatolia and first entered Europe by landing at Crete. From here some groups would reach Iberia. It's like J2a migrated from Chatal Hoyuk towards Crete and from there to parts of Italy.
 
There is a direct link to this, considering the main paternal component on Crete is J with 37% of which 25% is J2a M-410, most of the other rare clades developed later on Crete, but such a high clade presence of J2a is indicative of a first migration wave of people's from Anatolia directly to Crete. In fact, to most people's surprise, E-V13 a main Greek marker, albeit any and all E3b in it's totality is very rare on Crete, even R1b is more frequent, indicative of a later minor migration of people's to Crete.
 
Do you really believe it, or do you think it's a myth ?

Of course it's a myth. Some myths have a kernel of truth, of course, unlike the one that Caesar put about that he was descended from Venus.

Whether this one does I have no idea. How could it ever be proved? I suppose an attempt could be made to try to date the founding of Rome and see if it even corresponds to the archaeological level that might be attributed to the "Trojan War", but even that wouldn't be proof.

Great story, though, certainly miles above most stories put about by "new" people to get a little reflected glory.
 
Of course it's a myth. Some myths have a kernel of truth, of course, unlike the one that Caesar put about that he was descended from Venus.
Whether this one does I have no idea. How could it ever be proved? I suppose an attempt could be made to try to date the founding of Rome and see if it even corresponds to the archaeological level that might be attributed to the "Trojan War", but even that wouldn't be proof.
Great story, though, certainly miles above most stories put about by "new" people to get a little reflected glory.
Yes, we won't have ever a proof, but so many studies have been made on that with an unanimous opinion that it's only a myth, so we have to consider it only as a myth.
 
One tool to get a sense of the diversity in Italy is to look at the languages spoken there during the iron age. Even if language does not always map to ethnic identity, it's still a useful tool. To name a few (I am taking this mostly from Mallory):


Ligurian (Ligures, IE, possibly Celtic)
Lepontic (IE, Celtic)
Etruscan (Tyrsenian, non-IE)
Raetic (also thought to be Tyrsenian and related to Etruscan)
Umbrian (Umbri, related to Oscan)
Oscan (Sabines, Aurunci, Sidicini, Ausones)
Massapic (Iapyges, Dauni, Peucetii; possibly related to Illyrian)
N. Picene (undeciphered)
S. Picene (probably IE)
Venetic (IE, centum language, classification debatable)
Latin (closely related to Faliscan)
Faliscan (Falisci, closely related to Latin)


What this suggests is two things:


1. The presence of a neolithic Tyrsenian substrate; of course how extensive or homogeneous this was remains unknown. There could have been multiple non-IE peoples on the peninsula long before the arrival of the first Indo-Europeans. It would be interesting to know what hg(s) correspond to the Tyrsenians.


2. What looks like multiple waves of Indo-European diffusion, similar to what happened in Greece, and quite a lot of diversity even within the IE languages on the peninsula.


And of course this leaves out Sicily and all the later influences (Greek, Punic, Arab, Norman, Lombard, etc.)

As to number 1: There is quite a bit of evidence that the Neolithic that arrived in the south, from the area of Albania, for example, was different from that in the north, with the northern Italian Neolithic still retaining some interest in supplementing their diet with hunting, which the Neolithics in southern Italy by and large were not doing. That might indicate slightly different streams of the Neolithic, although of course, the south might have been over-hunted as well.

I would agree with number 2.

As for number 3,the Greek impact is clear. However, in my opinion, any Phoenician or Carthaginian impact would have been minor. The Phoenicians were traders who set up emporia; I'm not aware of any proof that they set up any colonies in Italy that would have included substantial numbers of colonists, unlike the Greeks for instance. There is a study of southern France that proves that point and might apply to Italy for comparison purposes.

The Normans were a very small group of men, mercenaries really. As members of an elite, (a mixed Scandinavian/Gallic group) they might indeed have left traces in the y dna, but autosomally, their contribution would basically have vanished, in my opinion. Btw, the area in France where the "Vikings" settled, while it does have some U-152, is higher, I think, in L-21, which hasn't shown up in northwestern Sicily to my recollection. That isn't altogether surprising, as the "Normans" were formed by a combination of Scandinavian men and French women. Some local men, Bretons, for example, certainly formed the contingent that went to England, but perhaps there weren't that many of them among the group that went to Sicily. I'll check my books.

The "Lombards" who were, to be precise, northern Italians from Lombardia, Piemonte, Liguria and other northern Italian areas, do represent a "folk" movement of peoples, a movement which has had the greatest impact, in my opinion, on the Sicilian genome in more recent times. Whole towns in the interior were established for them, towns which had been depopulated of Muslim Sicilians.

The "Arabs" didn't invade Sicily. They were Berbers, initially mainly from nearby Tunisia, although as in any invasions of this type you had adventurers from other areas of the Muslim world. Their presence can be traced most easily via the E-M81 clade, I believe, and perhaps the North African clade of J1 as a minority component, and it is surprising small considering all that has been written and said about the "Moorish" influence on Sicily. One could also, of course, add in some of the other clades of "E", although not E-V13, and even with some of the other "E" clades, you would have to get down to the sub-clade level and date the subclades to get a handle on whether they fit the time period, or are just as likely to have come with the Neolithic or the Bronze Age. Another thing that has to be taken into consideration is that the Normans and later Frederick II, did their own version of ethnic cleansing in Sicily. As with other such claims, I doubt it was as complete as they claimed, but that it happened is irrefutable.

There is a wonderful book about this whole period called A History of Muslim Sicily, by Leonard C. Chiarelli. In it, there is a poem by an exiled Muslim Sicilian:

"My hands are empty, but my eyes are filled with your memories, Sicily".

I highly recommend the book.

Ed. The "Moorish" invaders of Sicily were *mostly* so far as can be determined, North African Berbers, although there were definitely Arabs amongst them; in fact, some of the power struggles on the island can be traced to differences between these two groups.
 
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The Enotrians were led by Oentorus son of Lycaon son of Pelasgus; the Enotrians,Peucetians,Daunians,Messapians were PELaSGIANS, the Achaean Greeks that colonized Calabria were PELaSGIANS the Ionians and Aeolians were PElASGIANS the Etruscans were PELASGIaNS
 
The Ancestor's of some of today's east Sicilians, Sardinians and Tuscans (in ancient times anyways) were of the same race as the Palestinians; all pelasgians sea people's.
 
The Ancestor's of some of today's east Sicilians, Sardinians and Tuscans (in ancient times anyways) were of the same race as the Palestinians; all pelasgians sea people's.


Just generally, the ancestors of today's east Sicilians Sardinians and Tuscans can be found all over Europe and the Near East and the same can be said for any group in Europe, although the relative percentages by area may be different. In terms of the Sea People in particular, was there a study that showed the exact origin of the Sea Peoples? Is there some test somewhere of the dna of the Sea Peoples of which I'm unaware?

Also, what "race" precisely are the Palestinians? The Palestinian ethnogenesis is a very recent one from everything I've read. There is documented movement of tribes from the south during the Islamic era, which may have brought with them, or augmented through the Arabic slave trade, the SSA component in them, a component that is much smaller in the Christian Levantines who mixed less with the Islamic newcomers, and which probably also changed the proportion of J1 and J2 in the area and within the religious groups.
See: http://www.plosgenetics.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pgen.1003316


To take only the people of Sardinia as an example, they bear the closest resemblance, among European populations, to Oetzi and Gok 4, who are Neolithic Europeans. They are a mixture of Mediterranean and a small minority of S.W. Asian which may have been present since the Neolithic, (as is clear in every dodecad analysis of them) and some "North European" which came, I believe, with perhaps some admixture with more northerly Mesolithic hunter gatherers, as well as perhaps with later migrants from the Italian peninsula. It's true that they have, in Globe 13, for example, some West Asian, but it is extremely minor. The S.W.Asian level is about the same as Oetzi's.

See: Globe 13 Autosomal Spreadsheet, from which I took the following numbers.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0ArAJcY18g2GadF9CLUJnTUdSbkVJaDR2UkRtUE9kaUE#gid=2

Sardinians:
Med 71
W.Asian 4
S.W.Asian 8.7
Paleo African .1
N.Euro 16.1
All other clusters O

Palestinians:
Med 25.6
W.Asian 29.2
S.W.Asian 36.4
S.Asian .6
Paleo African .1
W.African 2.7
E.African 4.5
N.Europe .7

I don't see any identity between these people. Which clusters precisely are you associating with the Sea Peoples? Which modern group bears the most resemblance to them in your opinion?

And, as I have been meaning to ask, why all this talk about Pelasgians? Do you just mean the Neolithic inhabitants of the Aegean before the advent of the Indo-Europeans, or "Greek" speakers who ever they were autosomally? Is it very helpful to use these old classifications that were used by ancient authors long before modern archaeology and history had developed and even longer before the advent of genetic testing? As you can see, Neolithic Europeans are very different from modern Palestinians if Oetzi and the Sardinians are any indication. The Sea Peoples, according to some historians, may have been Indo-European speakers who would not, indeed, have been similar autosomally to the Neolithic inhabitants of Greece and Asia Minor who preceeded them, much less to modern Palestinians, but it's anyone's guess right now, as far as I'm concerned.

I think you can see my point without even getting into the Tuscans. I just don't see how we can know any of these things.
 
All that was Pelasgian was a race inhabiting the eastern Aegean sea island regions and parts of western Anatolia...I believe they emanated from Crete, which was also the first European region they would colonize from their original middle eastern homelands; these people migrated from Western Anatolia into the Aegean Sea towards Crete once....they would probably re-colonize the coast of Asia Minor as Pelasgians and Greeks later on, ultimately they were of west Asian origin although; the Sea people's they were called during Egyptian times and on their inscriptions, probably Mycenean/Minoan era Greeks primarily from the southern Greek peninsular sphere (Crete, the Peloponnese) pushed out by fierce Dorian tribes arriving from the north (continental Greece) who re-migrated towards their ancient west Asian lands and were responsible for the sack of The Amurru, Arzawa,Hittite empire,Qude and Cypriot people's; all in the span of 50 short years, people's from western Anatolia all south of Syria down across the levant onto the Sinai peninsula. They even attacked the Egyptians. These exact Greeks, known as Achaeans,Danaans and pelasgians that sacked Troy, were of the same middle eastern substratum as the Trojans, yet they had left the Middle East long before to settle Crete and pars of Greece, and had allied themselves with other Pelasgian/Hellenic people's AGAINST Troy. They sacked the Hittite empire and the Arzawa people, settling colonies of Caria,Lycia,Lycaonia,Lydia (or was that were they originally came from?), they arrived there via Rhodes and Crete probably; these sea people's it seems we're expelled by human invasions from Crete , so from there they attacked Egypt, invaded Cyprus, colonized western Turkey by destroying other civilizations (The pelasgians didn't anhilate the Kaska or the Phrygians though. From colonies such as Lycaonia, they moved towards Cilicia, sacking more Semitic civilizations there and continuing south along the Levantine coast down until the Sinai. The Pelasgians that settled the region of PALESTINe (Peleset) where of this race as compared to the majority who are Caananites in the region (Phoenicians, certain Lebanese,Israeli and Jordanian/ Syrian people's predominantly.) The Lydians were pelasgians as we're the Trojans. The Greek city of Thebes was also said to be linked to pelasgians; It was founded by Cadmus, a Phoenician from the Lebanese city of Tyre. Some men from this region of greece migrated into Troy and mixed with Dardanians and Teukrians. The latter, it seems, would leave Troy and the Dardanelles region of Turkey and they would migrate towards the Aegean world; somewhere in between the western coasts of Turkey and eastern continental Greece. Here, in the places they would settle (Lemnos,Samothrace,Crete,Thessaly etc.) they would be known as Danaans,Achaeans and pelasgians. They would at one point or another, emerge from all that Aegean world, probably from Crete or the Southern Peloponnese region of Greece and migrate towards Calabria,Apulia,Sicily,Tuscany, parts of Campania,Molise,Abruzzo,Marche; all across Italy their genetic signatures can be picked up in the forms of E3b and J2 predominantly. J2 is found at 35% in central Marche and Central Calabria; two very different regions of Italy. Southern Apulia has about20-25% J2 and frequencies rise in the north near Foggia/Lucera and the Gargano peninsula. The Salerno region of southern Campania has 25-30% and the Benevento/Caserta region has 20% as does Lazio. Sicily has 28% J2. E3b frequencies also peak in the south and north-west. Most of it is E-V13, a Greek colonization signal. Parts of Apulia and Calabria have 20-25% E3b, and eastern Basilicata has a national peak of 36%.
 
1. The genetic situation of Tuscany has changed tremendously in the past several thousand years, as the predominant J2,G or T lineages of the Etruscans were predominantly replaced by waves of incoming Gallic/Celtic migrants, most of them coming from adjacent Switzerland and France, especially in a high U152+ region like Tuscany. Today, only 15-20% of Tuscan men are J2 because many waves of R1b have co e in to replace them as is seen in the Gallic acquisition of Gallia Cisalpina/Transpadana regions if Italywere they migrated en masse, overtaking the local Etruscan populations (some of them, the rhaetics, had even infiltrated extreme northern Italy)
2. Sardinians have NO north-European component, the 40% or so of Sardinian men that are I belong to a subclade of I2a; they have an ancient links to the coast of the western Balkans.
3. The Palestinians are not a race, they're an ethnic group composed of various different haplogroups of which J and E take up a considerable portion of their males. About 40% of Palestinian males are J1, which is most frequent on the southern Arabian peninsula, 15-20% are J2 and another 20-25% belong to E3b. They have thus obviously acquired a large portion from Bedouin Arabs of the nearby regions as J1 surely didn't come from the Aegean. They have about 15-20% J2 and slightly higher E3b frequencies, but it seems, archaeologically, that the first Palestinians to establish the self in the Palestine region used Mycenean Greek style pottery, thus leading specialists to believe that these sea people's called "Peleshet" came from the Aegean Sea region of turkey/Greece. There are no DNA "tests" on sea people's that I know of; there just seems to be clues, large environmental phenomenon a that took place from Crete across Turkey and the Levant that indicated a cultural shift had taken place, a dark as had begun; the first presence of the sea people's marked th end of many civilizations; all of these victims which seem to have been in western Asia across Anatolia and the levant all the way to Egypt.
 
1. The genetic situation of Tuscany has changed tremendously in the past several thousand years, as the predominant J2,G or T lineages of the Etruscans were predominantly replaced by waves of incoming Gallic/Celtic migrants, most of them coming from adjacent Switzerland and France, especially in a high U152+ region like Tuscany. Today, only 15-20% of Tuscan men are J2 because many waves of R1b have co e in to replace them as is seen in the Gallic acquisition of Gallia Cisalpina/Transpadana regions if Italywere they migrated en masse, overtaking the local Etruscan populations (some of them, the rhaetics, had even infiltrated extreme northern Italy)
2. Sardinians have NO north-European component, the 40% or so of Sardinian men that are I belong to a subclade of I2a; they have an ancient links to the coast of the western Balkans.
3. The Palestinians are not a race, they're an ethnic group composed of various different haplogroups of which J and E take up a considerable portion of their males. About 40% of Palestinian males are J1, which is most frequent on the southern Arabian peninsula, 15-20% are J2 and another 20-25% belong to E3b. They have thus obviously acquired a large portion from Bedouin Arabs of the nearby regions as J1 surely didn't come from the Aegean. They have about 15-20% J2 and slightly higher E3b frequencies, but it seems, archaeologically, that the first Palestinians to establish the self in the Palestine region used Mycenean Greek style pottery, thus leading specialists to believe that these sea people's called "Peleshet" came from the Aegean Sea region of turkey/Greece. There are no DNA "tests" on sea people's that I know of; there just seems to be clues, large environmental phenomenon a that took place from Crete across Turkey and the Levant that indicated a cultural shift had taken place, a dark as had begun; the first presence of the sea people's marked th end of many civilizations; all of these victims which seem to have been in western Asia across Anatolia and the levant all the way to Egypt.

If the Etruscans are as per Giotto study in 2013, are from Southern Germany and a "rhaetian" people, then the old Malden theory is correct. That is the etruscans came down from the alps into Italy and enhanced their language with the Italic tribes, while the ones that stayed behind kept their "barbarous" language.

Malden plausibly suggests the opposite – it was the Etruscans who were descendants of the Rhaetians, not vice versa. He provides no evidence, only conjecture and logic. He argues:
The natural movement of the population expelled by the Gauls would have been to fall back upon the main body of their nation in their oldest seats south of the Apennines (which, with the swamps between them and the Po, actually formed an available line of defense), not to insulate themselves in the northern mountains. But if Raetia was the mother-country, whence the Etruscans descended into the plains of Italy, it may be easily believed, that a part of the nation staid [sic] behind, and to them the dwellers about the Po may have returned when they sought shelter from the terrible Gauls [citation omitted]. It may be esteemed a confirmation of this hypothesis of the origin of the Etruscans, that they believed the north to be the seat of their gods [citation omitted]. (Malden, 85.)
Elsewhere in the same book, Malden draws on Niebuhr to disentangle the Tyrsenians (and the Tyrrhennians) from the Etruscans:
If then we are to believe that the name Tyrseni in Italy belonged originally and properly to the Pelasgian population, the question still remains, how the Greek writers invariably called the Etruscans Tyrseni and Etruria Tyrsenia. The true solution of the problem is, that the country retained its early appellation, and the Etruscans who conquered it succeeded to the name of its former inhabitants. (Malden, 78.)
 
Everything contradicts this; the language/customs of thenetruscans, the way the Etruscans saw/represented themselves; all leads us to believe they were Pelasgian in origin.
 
Their ancient language is closest to modern day Armenian and may have been a proto form of it.
 
Remember what legends say, Tubal disembarked near Tuscany; Tubal traces to Iberian Caucasus people's of early Georgia....?
 
It may seem useless to try to base information on population movements via the analysis of Ancient Greek or roman mythology, but what historians of the time wrote actually made a lot of sense because mythology was based on the history/origins of the people worshipping the religion in question. If the bible, for example, associates Javan son of Japheth with Ion, eponymous father of the Ionian people then I will believe that because it's myth and legend but it's based on fact; it's the recounting of the stories of civilizations. Now, it would seem, the son's of Ion, according to the biblxe and many other historical sources of the time, were Elishah (settlers of Cyprus) Tarshish (south-western turkey), Kttim (other Cypriot group), and Dodanim/Rodanim island of Rhodes; that's were Ionian Greeks settled at first.
 

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